wear the mask
by Roses of Sharon
Summary: Don’t be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks. And none of them are me. Saicentric. Shinobicentric.


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Summary: Don't be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks. And none of them are me. Saicentric. Shinobicentric.

Disclaimer: I do not own _Naruto_. Nor do I own The Mask Exercise, or the poem "The Mask I Wear."

wear the mask

--

_Don't be fooled by me.  
Don't be fooled by the face I wear  
for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks-  
masks that I'm afraid to take off  
and none of them are me._

--

Sai's room, when he lives in it, is white. Sakura always paints hers, every time a different color; Naruto's is orange, except when Sakura paints it for him; Sasuke's is white, too, only when Sakura doesn't paint it for him.

(Sakura still doesn't paint Sai's. He wonders why, sometimes. Naruto never really explained it.)

Sai's is black on white on white, and Sakura hated that he used tacks on the walls. He uses tape now, and his room is filled with sketches. Sketches, and books, and pictures.

He collects face, and expressions, and smiles, most of all. He read somewhere that smiles are made for every occasion. He wants to find them all.

At least, he thinks that that's what he's doing.

Some days, he's not quite sure.

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Sai has only ever been on two missions with Yamanaka Ino. One was espionage. The other was a mistake.

Espionage, he thinks, is easy with Ino, who has a fake expression for everything. She slips her mind into the body of another, and then she _is _that person, for as long as she needs to be.

For hours or minutes or days, Yamanaka Ino uses a body and a face that is not her own, and _makes _it her own. Sai has envied her this, once in a while, but what she finishes with is never pretty.

She has never broken in front of him - in front of him, she wears only the blank mask and the sharp-edged smile, and he thinks she doesn't trust him. He's probably right.

But she has broken elsewhere, and he knows this.

Because her smile has sharp edges, sharp broken edges, like glass shards from broken hearts.

And he thinks he knows why.

The other mission was a mistake; and he was only on it with her because he had passed her on the road to Konoha, and she had needed him. It is not often that he identifies someone as needing him, but in this case, she does.

He scribbles a dragon on a sheet of parchment, and sends it to the Hokage.

He saves Ino's life, and for this she owes him. Owes him more than a smile and a kiss and a thank-you, and she will remember it forever.

That is why she looks sad when she sees him; that is why she looks angry.

That is why she never smiles for him. Not really.

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Hinata smiles, he notices. It is strange, because he is nearly always with Naruto, and when Hinata sees Naruto, she smiles the small, shy smile, and blushes and faints. There is no expression on an unconscious person's face, except maybe pain or relaxation.

He thinks, sometimes, that there is one on hers. It is soft, and it is gentle - she is shinobi, he tells himself, and, even more, kunoichi. What is in her that is so gentle that it can be seen even in unconsciousness? But it is there, nevertheless, and sometimes he watches her until she comes around, and smiles that little smile at Naruto again.

Once, he spent an hour on a ram. It was a good ram, with curling hair and perfectly shaped hooves and strong, strong horns.

He sends it to watch her.

She has a lot of smiles, he learns that day. She has smiles for everything - a smile for the maid that brings her tea, and a smile for the sister that trains in the courtyard; a smile for Hyuuga Neji as he walks by her room, a smile for her father.

It is that which makes him smile, when the ram shows him.

Sai knows about everything and everyone Hyuuga, just as he knows Aburame and Inuzuka and Uchiha, what is left of it.

He knows what the clan is like, what Hyuuga Hiashi does to his daughters, and what Hyuuga Neji once did to Hinata.

It is that which makes her admirable, in his eyes.

That she can still smile at them.

He wonders if she really feels it.

He wonders if she really feels.

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He met her sister once, dark-haired not-so-little Hanabi, with the sharp white teeth and steel in her eyes. She doesn't smile, and he can tell. Her mouth must have been soft once, at birth maybe, but now it is hard and drawn, beautiful and unforgiving.

He smiles a smile he learned from Sakura, polite and aloof, on one mission gone very odd where a daimyo had nearly proposed to her before she had killed him. _notlittle _Hanabi blinks once, twice, and unfurls a predator's smile, all dominance and prettypretty teeth.

Not a new one then, he sighs, because he has seen a similar one on Ino before. This is Ino's smile, in his eyes, because this is what Ino _means_. And then he turns to Hinata, who is watching with resignation and a smile on her face. The smile speaks of… of broken wishes and shattered dreams and a poem he once read.

It is a smile that says _I love you _and a million other things, besides.

A good smile, he nods, and leaves.

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That night in the apartment they almost-share, Sakura reads a magazine, Naruto watches television, Sasuke studies scrolls, and Sai watches them.

When Sakura throws down her magazine, suddenly, and marches toward her room, no one stops her, though Naruto wants to and Sasuke wishes he could.

Sai is the one to pick up the magazine. It takes a minute before he discovers what has so disturbed the pink-haired not-woman: _Unloved as a child, he may never know how to love, though he has learned the gestures_, the magazine reads. A review, on an inane show probably based on something else equally inane. Funny that such little things can affect her so much; he shrugs.

He passes it to Sasuke, watches dark emotion cloud his eyes.

Sasuke leaves, and does not smile.

There are only three smiles Sai has ever seen on Sasuke. The avenger-smile, when he is happy with bloodlust and sated on death, with black marking on his skin and wings spreading from his back; the not-smile, that is hard and bitter and not; and the soft smile that was strangely like Hinata's soft, quiet _Iloveyou_ smile.

He has only seen that smile once, and it is why Sai believes in Sasuke the not-avenger as he knocks on Sakura's door.

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Sai never seeks out Aburame Shino. Maybe it is because he, too, hides from the truth. Mostly, it is because masked men hold nothing for him.

Not even Kakashi, who smiles not with his mouth but with his eyes.

And _because _Kakashi smiles with his eyes (_eye_), Sai never watches that, really.

Sai watches the mask, watches the blue-black-grey-green cloth as it moves.

Tries to figure out what's really behind it.

Besides the scar.

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In the mornings, before the mirror, Sai practices. The masks slide on and off his face almost as easily as his ANBU mask, almost as easily as Ino's masks.

But not quite, he thinks, almost disappointed in himself. His features are not so malleable, his eyes too unchanging. It is an imperfect mask, and incomplete one, one doomed to failure, if the one who watches searches long and hard enough.

Sakura walked in on him once. It was a long time ago, back when he was more inexperienced, back when his masks took seconds to replace.

She let him practice on her.

She always was able to see right through the mask.

He wonders if she still can.

He wonders if he wants her to.


End file.
